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Morphology and Biochemistry

Subjects

Abstract

who are accustomed to ponder the ultimate problems of biology are aware that though the need for a comprehensive biological science is great, the difficulties in obtaining it are equally considerable. Such old antitheses as that of form and function need not, indeed, detain us, for as Woodger's analysis1 made clear, form is simply a short temporal slice of a single spatiotemporal entity. The main difficulty which confronts the biologist concerns the fusion of the two great realms of morphology and biochemistry or biophysics. Because at the present day the biochemist has little enough to offer towards the solution of the problem of the maintenance of organic form, the morphologist is apt to suppose that no connexions exist, and to acquiesce in an acceptance of the ancient Aristotelian distinction between materia and forma. This, however, is a counsel of despair.